Saturday, November 20, 2010

Smashwords - Ebook Publishing and Distribution Made Easy

Over 10,000 authors and publishers around the world now use Smashwords as their ebook publishing and distribution platform.

I'm thrilled with the growth we've experienced over the last couple years, and I'm even more thrilled at how we've helped these authors and publishers collectively reach hundreds of thousands of new readers.

Yet the hypercompetitive side of me realizes there are several million talented authors around the world who still haven't discovered Smashwords. With your help, we can reach them. We can dream, can't we?

As I've mentioned previously on this blog, each new Smashwords author brings new readers who then discover and enjoy other Smashwords authors and publishers. It's a virtuous flywheel where new authors and publishers bring new readers, new readers bring more authors and publishers, and so on. We want to reach these authors and publishers before some Smashwords imitator reaches them first. Have I mentioned I'm competitive?

Below I embedded a brief introduction to Smashwords for the new and uninitiated. Feel free to share it with your favorite author/publisher friends by clicking the handy Facebook or Twitter links, embed it into your own blog, or email it to friend.

My thanks to all Smashwords authors, publishers, readers and retailers for your continued partnership and support.

Update: Join the Promotion

What began as a simple "Introduction to Smashwords" as morphed into a "Spread the Word about Smashwords" promotion. Below is a list of Smashwords authors who are spreading the love. To join this list embed the presentation into your blog or website, then send us the hyperlink at the "Comments/questions" link at the Smashwords home page.

Here's the current list of participants (BTW, this is great list to discover up-and-coming indie authors!):

Audrey Driscoll integrated a link to the presentation into a broader post titled, Views on Book Reviewing that explores how book reviews are changing, and blurring the lines between professional reviewers and ordinary readers.

"No longer must we send out query letters to New York literary agents who keep the keys to the masterful publishing houses tucked away for a select few. You and I, mere mortals of grammatical prose, can now bypass the entire, long-winded, life-sucking process of asking permission and take the world by storm with the Smashwords battering-ram."

Mara and Ford Smith link to this blog post from the resources section of their web site, Live Simply With Style, where they credit Smashwords with making it possible to produce their books in multiple formats

Nick Davis blogs over at Alt World that Smashwords empowers authors to "take their work directly to readers." Amen.

Joeleene Naylor has a great summary of what Smashwords offers to both readers and authors over at her blog, Amaranthine Night

Donna Butler has a post titled Thank You Mark Coker! (you're welcome, and yes, Mark's a decent name for a kid!) where she eloquently captures the frustrations faced by authors who don't fit the myopic preconceptions of literary gatekeepers. She speaks to the joy of reaching readers directly on her own terms. I love this quote from her, especially the last line:

And yes, I realize that Smashwords provides an equal opportunity for both talented and not so talented authors to get published. For every writer like me who majored in English, and spent a fortune on writers manuals and lived and breathed literature since they were old enough to read, there will be those who published on a whim. But that's fitting in the age of reality television, where the audience decides who is most qualified to entertain. Book lovers will be able to distinguish between those who've opened a vein and those who have opened one too many cans of beer.

Stuart Aken embedded the presentation at the bottom of his publishing and writing blog, must mutter. Stuart does some interesting interviews with indie authors, and I see two Smashwords authors on the first page, so check him out.

27 comments:

It'll be interesting to see your year-end post. I'm wondering if you guys are turning a profit yet. I've only just discovered Smashwords (only just decided to publish an ebook, heh heh), but I'm digging the affiliate program and the ease of making an account and downloading ebooks for any reader.

Just a small suggestion - new-to-publishing/non-technical people might be a bit put off by the word 'metadata', which you use twice on the second slide. Maybe 'book details' or 'book information' might work better there?

Thanks Wayne. You were the first to embed it. I gave you a plug over at https://www.smashwords.com/about/beta

For anyone else who embeds the Slideshare presentation into their blogs, please drop us a note via the "comments/questions" link at Smashwords and we'll give you a little plug in the next "site updates" update. Of course, you can also post a link to your blog here in the comments as well. Thanks for your support!

Amanda, thanks for the suggestion. I updated the presentation to explain the "metadata" term.

Nice presentation, Mark. I continue to offer my congratulations to you and all of the Smashwords team for the success over the last couple years.

Your thoughts about how we all build on the success of each other are spot on! We should all celebrate the success of each of us, because together we will continue to build something that is bigger and better than the sum of its parts.

I have included your presentation in my own blog, and I commend it to all other Smashwords authors.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts, Wil. Exactly. I really believe that indie authors, working both collectively and individually, will define the future of book publishing. The rules of ebook publishing success are still being written, and one doesn't need to look far to realize indie authors are the ones out there experimenting with innovative forms of marketing, pricing, sampling and promotion.

I POSTED SPREAD THE WORD ABOUT SMASHWORDS AND THE ARTICLE OF JOSEPH FOUND ON HIS BLOG www.brainlazy.com ON FACEBOOK AND ON MY TURTLE RESCUE WEB SITE.I ECHO JOSEPH'S EXPERIENCE IT TOOK ME A LITTLE WHILE LONGER BUT I HAD NO EXPERIENCE AND WASABLE TO PUBLISH 2 EBOOKS THANK YOU FOR HELPING ME ACHIEVE A DREAM OF A LIFETIMECOLETTE BROWNBOOKS: 1- WEB QUEST FOR A HEART OF GOLD 2- TURTLEVIEW POEMS - L'ACUEIL

I imbedded it on the Two-Fisted Blog (http://twofistedblogger.blogspot.com) but, due to the size, had to put it down at the bottom. If a smaller widget comes out, I'll be able to feature it more prominently.

Thanks for all your work on our behalf negotiating about the discounts and so forth. I also appreciate how prompt you've been with responses every time I ask a question.